Customer Reviews

ZENITH ZDS5041 Pro Series Compression Tool

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(E-Mail To Zenith 5-23-2004)
Regarding this RG-6 "Pro" Compression Tool (and obviously you have used the term "Pro" loosely) I have personally used and destroyed 5 of these tools to crimp my Zenith RG-6 coax cable. These tools keep breaking! The screw is hardened steel but the nut is not and isn't even large enough to handle the amount of pressure required to properly compress your fittings. This has become extremely frustrating for myself and obviously alot of other people as this same complaint has infact been posted on numerous websites all over the internet. Why do you keep manufacturing this tool? It needs to be recalled. It is a very poor design. Are you planning to release a better version of this tool? I cannot keep going back to Lowe's and returning this inferior tool just to get another and have it break as well after one or two uses. Please respond with any suggestions you may have regarding this matter and also please forward this e-mail to your R&D department as well as any senior management who might care about the hundreds of frustrated and upset consumers out there who are now questioning the reliability and quality of all Zenith products just because of one little poorly manufactured tool.
Thank You,

The compression bolt is made of hardened steel. The nut is not. The nut strips after very few uses. I went through 3 of these while installing zenith cable ends on the 10 cables in my house. Zenith should have made the nut stronger. Perhaps you could buy a case hardened nut at a hardware store and replace the weak one. Perhpas you could buy a better tool to begin with--if you can find one.

Two years ago I bought a new house and used this tool to make at least 30 connections for cable and satellite runs without any problems. The connectors are very high quality.

Now I'm building an entertainment wall and decided it would be a good idea to replace the tool since the blades were getting dull. I've now gone through five of these tools and all broke on the first or second use and were replaced by Lowes. But alas my last one broke also and it's been too long so I can't take it back, so now I'll have to use some other (inferior) connector process.

Zenith must have changed something in their manufacturing process. Hopefully they'll respond to a direct inquiry with a replacement of some sort so I can finish my wall using consistent connectors.

As an electrical engineer with very strong mechanical skills, I was EXTREEMLY disappointed with this tool. After only two connections, the tool broke. This meant a trip back to Lowe's to purchase another one. Guess what, this one broke after only one connection. The undersized nut's soft threads stripped. This made the entire installation worthless, because standard RG6 connectors will not fit the Quad shield Zenith cable. Also, the instruction sheet that came with the tool was a very poor quality photocopy, making the illistrations worthless. Lastly, the tool's cable stripper did not work very well either. I plan to pull out the Zenith cable and return it along with the connectors (which were too expensive by the way), and both tools and return it all to Lowe's, with a recommendaton that Lowe's remove these items from their shelf. I wasted a whole day using this garbage.

It was either bad when I received it, or it broke the first time I tried to use it. I tried to locate another nut for it, but the size is not standard. If you need to connect F-connectors to coax go another route. Don't use this piece of junk.